Popular in

Arts and Humanities

Titus Quinctius Flamininus’ “Italian triumph”

McGill University Michael Fronda

Arts and Humanities

City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island

Independent Scholar David A. Campbell

Culture and Society

The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place

New York University Harvey Moltoch

Education

The Role of Education in Reducing Racial Inequality

University of Southern California Pedro A. Noguera

Law

Diversity and Social Mobility in the UK legal profession

Law Society I. Stephanie Boyce

Economics

Gender and Economics

University of California Santa Barbara Shelly Lundberg

Mediating Violence from Africa

View more insights in Books - Social Sciences

View more figures from St. Mary's College of Maryland

View the page of George Macleod

Read the Study

George S. MacLeod explores the violent histories of post-Cold War Francophone Africa. Trauma, memory, and Africa’s global standing are key themes.

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 7, 2023

Generating Workspace

Export as PDF

The speaker reflects on their journey that led to writing a book, which began with their experiences studying abroad in Senegal from 2003 to 2004. They observed the day-to-day life in Africa, emphasizing themes of hospitality, friendship, and community, contrasting it with stereotypical media portrayals. Upon returning to the U.S., the speaker explored literature on the 1994 Rwandan genocide, leading to a central question: how to ethically represent Africa's diverse experiences, including its traumatic histories, without reinforcing harmful stereotypes.

The speaker's PhD dissertation expanded this investigation beyond Rwanda to other contexts, such as child soldiers and Islamist terrorism in Africa. They sought to understand how these figures were represented in literature and media, influenced by changing political dynamics since the Cold War. The book includes close readings of various texts, including films and survivor narratives, examining how authors respond to politically charged representations of violence.

The speaker critiques the representation of African experiences as overly simplistic or sensationalized, advocating for a more nuanced understanding that recognizes both the realities of violence and the richness of cultural contexts. They argue for an engagement with these narratives that acknowledges readers' emotional responses while encouraging critical thought about historical and political contexts.

Overall, the speaker hopes readers will develop a critical awareness of how stories from Africa are presented and engage empathetically yet thoughtfully with these narratives, moving beyond mere sympathy to a deeper understanding of the complexities involved.

Language:

Export as PDF

Export as PDF
Sure! However, it seems you didn't provide the specific video you want me to analyze. Please share the video, and I'll help you identify the five key points.

Export as PDF
It seems you've a placeholder ('..') instead of a specific video or title. Please provide the video or the title you'd like me to analyze, and I'll help you identify key quotes from it.

Export as PDF
Here are some similar articles that discuss themes related to representation, cultural narratives, and the complexities of African experiences, particularly in the convideo of literature and media:

1. **"Representing Africa: The Politics of Visual and Cultural Representation"** - This article examines how African cultures are portrayed in different media forms, tackling issues of authenticity and the impact of external narratives on local identities.

2. **"Postcolonial Perspectives on African Literature"** - This article explores how African writers negotiate their identities and experiences in a postcolonial convideo, highlighting the tension between traditional narratives and modern interpretations.

3. **"Stereotypes and Realities: Understanding African Narratives in Global Literature"** - A critical investigation into how stereotypes shape perceptions of Africa in literature and how contemporary authors challenge these narratives.

4. **"Narratives of Conflict in African Literature"** - This piece delves into how literature represents violence and conflict in African societies, focusing on both historical events and their fictional portrayals.

5. **"The Ethics of Representation: Literature and Human Rights in Africa"** - An exploration of how African authors tackle sensitive subjects, such as genocide and displacement, while striving for ethical representation and often drawing on their own experiences.

6. **"The Role of Memoir in Understanding African Histories"** - This article analyzes the significance of memoirs and personal narratives in shaping perceptions of African history, particularly regarding traumatic events and personal loss.

7. **"Imagining Africa: The Impact of Globalization on African Storytelling"** - Examines how globalization influences African narratives and the challenges of maintaining cultural authenticity amidst external pressures.

8. **"From Sympathy to Empathy: Understanding African Stories in Global Convideo"** - Discusses the importance of moving beyond sympathy in readers' interactions with African narratives to promote a deeper emotional engagement and understanding of the complexities involved.

These articles collectively reflect the ongoing dialogue about how Africa is represented in literature and media, the implications of these representations on broader societal perceptions, and the importance of nuanced, ethical storytelling.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.025 --> 00:01.685
And a lot of ways this book,

00:01.685 --> 00:04.245
started when I studied abroad in Senegal.

00:04.245 --> 00:06.285
When I was an undergraduate in 2003

00:06.285 --> 00:09.845
and 2004, I was studying Francophone literature at

00:09.845 --> 00:11.005
a Senegalese University.

00:11.245 --> 00:13.845
I was, living in a dorm with a Senegalese roommate.

00:13.925 --> 00:15.005
I was often the only,

00:15.025 --> 00:16.365
non Senegalese person in my classes.

00:17.305 --> 00:20.325
Um, and I was really struck by my experience

00:20.325 --> 00:22.645
of living in Africa day to day,

00:22.645 --> 00:25.245
which was really a lot about hospitality

00:25.345 --> 00:26.845
and friendship and community.

00:27.425 --> 00:30.685
Um, and then the vision of Africa I had had before I came

00:30.705 --> 00:33.325
and the way Africa Africa's often portrayed in the media.

00:33.985 --> 00:37.085
Um, and so I returned to the United States wanting to,

00:37.265 --> 00:39.565
as a undergraduate, work some more on Africa.

00:40.185 --> 00:42.045
And it was then that I discovered,

00:42.275 --> 00:45.365
fictional literature about the 1994 genocide against the

00:45.445 --> 00:50.125
Tutsi in Rwanda, which was vastly different event

00:50.385 --> 00:52.325
and cultural context from what I had experienced.

00:52.865 --> 00:54.445
Uh, and so there's a fundamental question

00:54.445 --> 00:56.245
that I think runs through the entire book.

00:56.315 --> 00:57.885
That was when I started, that was

00:57.885 --> 00:59.525
that I started formulating at that time,

00:59.975 --> 01:02.525
which was essentially how to balance the

01:03.175 --> 01:06.485
day-to-day lived experience of, of Africa

01:06.705 --> 01:09.165
for the thousands, hundreds of thousands

01:09.165 --> 01:10.725
of cult cultural contexts that exist,

01:10.725 --> 01:12.165
which are often very different from the

01:12.165 --> 01:13.445
stereotype portrayals.

01:13.945 --> 01:17.245
How to balance that with also making visible very real

01:17.805 --> 01:20.885
traumatic, tragic events like the 1994 genocide against the

01:21.045 --> 01:23.325
Tutsi, and doing so in a way that was thoughtful

01:23.325 --> 01:25.245
and that was ethical and was not reproducing

01:25.245 --> 01:26.365
these kind of stereotypes.

01:26.905 --> 01:30.045
Um, and so I was still very much motivated by this question

01:30.045 --> 01:32.205
of how to ethically represent,

01:32.405 --> 01:35.085
violence from Africa when I started on my PhD dissertation.

01:35.545 --> 01:37.365
Uh, but I wanted to broaden,

01:37.365 --> 01:39.725
the scope from the genocide in Rwanda

01:39.725 --> 01:41.125
to look at some other cultural context.

01:41.745 --> 01:43.245
And so that's where I started looking,

01:43.345 --> 01:44.725
not just at literature

01:44.725 --> 01:47.365
and first person testimony from, survivors

01:47.365 --> 01:48.765
of the 19 94 2 T genocide,

01:49.265 --> 01:53.245
but at, novels, first person, literature,

01:53.415 --> 01:55.845
about child soldiers or narrated by child soldiers,

01:56.465 --> 01:59.365
and then also at representations of the Islamist,

01:59.685 --> 02:02.525
terrorist, which, sadly in Africa, there has been,

02:02.835 --> 02:05.085
over the last decades violence done in the name

02:05.085 --> 02:07.285
of Islam similar to what we associate war say

02:07.285 --> 02:08.965
with Afghanistan or, Iraq

02:09.065 --> 02:10.645
or places in the, in the Middle East.

02:11.265 --> 02:16.165
Um, and, as I was doing that, I began to see

02:16.345 --> 02:19.365
how a lot of these figures, like the child soldier,

02:19.425 --> 02:20.965
and the Islamist terrorist

02:20.985 --> 02:22.605
and the TSI Rwandan survivor,

02:22.955 --> 02:25.645
that the way they were talked about in media often had a

02:25.645 --> 02:29.165
very, clear, political, purpose

02:29.865 --> 02:32.645
and that this political purpose could be,

02:32.765 --> 02:33.925
usefully situated

02:34.035 --> 02:37.365
with the way international relations had changed,

02:37.475 --> 02:38.685
following the Cold War.

02:39.025 --> 02:41.045
Um, so I, I think I'll get into that a little bit,

02:41.065 --> 02:42.245
later in the interview.

02:42.345 --> 02:43.805
But I would say the genesis of this,

02:43.805 --> 02:44.805
this book really emerged

02:44.805 --> 02:47.045
with my own firsthand experience in Africa,

02:47.465 --> 02:51.285
and then reconciling that with the very different,

02:51.295 --> 02:54.285
experience and event of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi,

02:54.285 --> 02:56.445
which I learned about upon my return from Senegal.

02:56.455 --> 02:58.845
There were, multiple strands, or

02:59.125 --> 03:00.765
Multiple threads of research that went into this.

03:01.305 --> 03:03.405
Uh, on the one hand, the book itself,

03:03.425 --> 03:07.845
is not an exhaustive, sort of encyclopedic chronicle

03:07.865 --> 03:09.365
of all the authors or filmmakers

03:09.365 --> 03:11.045
who have written about violent events in Africa.

03:11.545 --> 03:13.565
Uh, it's close readings of,

03:13.565 --> 03:15.005
and viewings of a number of texts.

03:15.025 --> 03:18.645
And so on the one hand, there are simply a lot of very,

03:18.655 --> 03:22.005
close reading of, the, the work.

03:22.285 --> 03:24.925
Ella is not obliged Johnny Mad Dog, the film,

03:24.985 --> 03:28.685
and then the film Timbuktu, tootsy survivor memoirs,

03:28.685 --> 03:32.125
including those by Esri Muo and, Venus Ka Maha

03:32.125 --> 03:35.525
and Elise Mus Mandera, which I really engaged with,

03:35.945 --> 03:40.285
and read, very, very closely, in terms of

03:41.205 --> 03:43.645
figuring out how I was gonna situate my arguments within the

03:43.645 --> 03:45.525
larger discussions that were happening at the time.

03:46.225 --> 03:48.405
Um, what I found was that there was a lot

03:48.405 --> 03:51.165
of interest in representations of violence from Africa,

03:51.225 --> 03:54.285
and there was a lot of interest with how, from scholars

03:54.285 --> 03:57.125
with the ways in which political violence like the Tutsi

03:57.125 --> 03:59.885
genocide, child soldiers,

04:00.345 --> 04:01.525
and, Islamist terrorists

04:01.525 --> 04:02.885
and their victims were being represented.

04:03.235 --> 04:07.005
There's also much more, broader, occurring

04:07.005 --> 04:08.645
of thought emerging from,

04:08.645 --> 04:11.125
in large part from Holocaust studies called trauma studies

04:11.555 --> 04:13.765
that was looking not just at, in the African context,

04:13.865 --> 04:16.245
but in a broader context about the ethics, responding

04:16.245 --> 04:19.165
to traumatic stories about the politi, politicizing

04:19.165 --> 04:20.365
of memory and things like that.

04:20.905 --> 04:23.485
And while, there had been some work on, say,

04:23.485 --> 04:26.485
post-colonial trauma studies, in the specific context

04:26.625 --> 04:30.005
of Africa and what it meant to mediate violence from Africa,

04:30.405 --> 04:33.085
specifically, through the lens of these theories

04:33.085 --> 04:35.965
of ethical ways to represent trauma, that there had not been

04:35.965 --> 04:38.525
as much, connecting those two strands.

04:38.625 --> 04:41.205
And so I became very motivated, motivated, motivated

04:41.305 --> 04:43.365
to find new ways to talk about

04:43.365 --> 04:46.165
and think about representing trauma from Africa in part,

04:46.165 --> 04:49.085
and formed by theories of the witness, theories

04:49.085 --> 04:51.485
of the relationship between the witness and the person

04:51.705 --> 04:54.045
and the person listening, and things like that.

04:54.425 --> 04:57.365
And then, the final piece, in addition to engaging

04:57.365 --> 04:58.365
with the primary texts

04:58.365 --> 05:00.965
and engaging with these theoretical texts on,

05:00.985 --> 05:04.085
on trauma theory and post-colonial studies, was to look at,

05:04.225 --> 05:06.205
just contemporary,

05:06.425 --> 05:08.885
or I should say, contemporary in the last 20, 30 years,

05:08.885 --> 05:10.285
political accounts, how were child

05:10.445 --> 05:11.965
soldiers represented in newspapers?

05:11.985 --> 05:13.925
How were they talked about by politicians?

05:14.305 --> 05:15.925
How were they talked about, you know, by,

05:15.985 --> 05:19.165
by people in the un And then trying to,

05:19.195 --> 05:22.045
situate the specific works I was talking about,

05:22.045 --> 05:23.725
about child soldiers, about terrorists,

05:23.725 --> 05:25.165
about Tutsi survivors.

05:25.705 --> 05:29.045
Um, not just within the context of other literary works,

05:29.095 --> 05:30.645
other films about these figures,

05:30.665 --> 05:32.285
but in the broader context of

05:32.285 --> 05:34.245
how these figures were discussed,

05:34.245 --> 05:36.085
in mainstream media and political discourse.

05:36.225 --> 05:38.045
And to see ways in which the authors

05:38.045 --> 05:40.765
or filmmakers themselves might actually be responding

05:41.385 --> 05:45.365
to the very politicized in some ways semantically,

05:45.545 --> 05:48.765
overdetermined, nature

05:48.945 --> 05:50.325
of the figures they were writing about.

05:50.785 --> 05:53.605
So, I, I should say, this post called where framework is,

05:53.625 --> 05:55.325
is certainly not one that I've invented.

05:55.475 --> 05:56.725
It's one that I came

05:56.725 --> 05:59.965
Across a lot in reading, political,

05:59.965 --> 06:01.205
political science,

06:01.325 --> 06:03.605
articles in political science articles in anthropology

06:03.825 --> 06:07.005
and in sociology, talking about changes in political

06:07.005 --> 06:09.445
organization in Africa, changes in sociopolitical

06:09.445 --> 06:10.445
organization in Africa.

06:11.065 --> 06:13.365
And I was struck by, in the domain of literary film

06:13.365 --> 06:16.085
and cultural studies in the Frankfort African context,

06:16.275 --> 06:18.845
that this specific framework wasn't really being used.

06:18.845 --> 06:21.525
People were still using post-colonial,

06:22.225 --> 06:24.965
or critiquing post-colonial, but not offering replacements.

06:25.345 --> 06:28.205
Um, and it, and I began to realize that

06:28.445 --> 06:30.485
although of course, like any framework, it's limiting

06:30.485 --> 06:32.685
and it leaves things out and it needs to be interrogated,

06:33.145 --> 06:36.325
that it actually could be very useful to understand

06:36.905 --> 06:38.445
why figures like child soldiers,

06:38.705 --> 06:40.765
why figures like Tootsy genocide survivors,

06:40.765 --> 06:42.045
why figures like terrorists

06:42.145 --> 06:44.925
and figures like celebrity humanitarians were all

06:44.925 --> 06:47.485
of a sudden popping up pretty much everywhere

06:47.675 --> 06:49.525
that you looked, in the 1990s.

06:50.225 --> 06:53.085
And I think the child soldiers probably the best,

06:53.085 --> 06:55.765
maybe the clearest example, that I can give, which is

06:55.765 --> 06:59.285
that, there certainly were child soldiers combatants

06:59.285 --> 07:01.845
under the age of 18 that were participating in armed

07:02.245 --> 07:04.205
conflicts in Africa during the Cold War.

07:04.205 --> 07:05.805
And this has been documented by historian,

07:05.865 --> 07:07.605
by anthropologists like David Rosen.

07:08.105 --> 07:11.725
Um, but the West seemed relatively indifferent to that

07:11.725 --> 07:13.725
because they were fighting against communism,

07:13.725 --> 07:16.085
which was the big priority of the international community

07:16.555 --> 07:19.005
with the fall of the Soviet Union,

07:19.585 --> 07:22.325
and with, the quote unquote international community

07:22.325 --> 07:24.965
looking for new, kind of organizing principles

07:25.025 --> 07:26.405
to justify their work together.

07:26.945 --> 07:29.245
Um, all of a sudden defending,

07:29.405 --> 07:31.125
children's rights became this big priority.

07:31.125 --> 07:34.045
And so you can actually trace a through line between,

07:34.425 --> 07:35.765
un statements and reports

07:35.785 --> 07:37.485
and meetings about the rights of children

07:37.585 --> 07:39.885
and fighting, child, and,

07:39.905 --> 07:43.365
and fighting, child, combatants, child soldiers

07:43.865 --> 07:46.645
to then articles in the media presenting this as all

07:46.645 --> 07:49.125
of a sudden this brand new phenomenon in Africa.

07:49.505 --> 07:52.365
And then novels, both francophone Anglo

07:52.425 --> 07:54.965
and Anglophone with child soldier protagonists.

07:55.545 --> 07:58.565
But every time I read people speaking about these books in

07:58.565 --> 08:00.485
the context of Francophone African literature,

08:00.675 --> 08:03.725
nowhere was anyone mentioning about this new focus on child

08:04.005 --> 08:07.125
soldiers, how there was some, contradiction

08:07.165 --> 08:09.365
or hypocrisy in, you know,

08:09.725 --> 08:11.565
ignoring the phenomenon when it suited the west,

08:11.585 --> 08:14.365
and then all of a sudden rallying around the prevention of,

08:14.425 --> 08:16.645
of child soldiering when it seemed politically expedient.

08:16.785 --> 08:19.365
And that, to me, felt like a very important, thing

08:19.365 --> 08:22.045
to acknowledge, because if an author is not somehow

08:22.045 --> 08:24.525
acknowledging that when writing a story of a child soldier,

08:24.715 --> 08:28.245
they themselves, one could argue are complicit in,

08:28.465 --> 08:31.565
in making the child soldier seem like an object of empathy,

08:31.565 --> 08:33.805
which would then justify western intervention, et cetera.

08:34.225 --> 08:38.445
Um, and I found that this lens opened up a whole new reading

08:38.465 --> 08:41.765
of this book called Ali is Not Obliged by Amadou Carma,

08:42.015 --> 08:45.565
where in fact, rather than being a first person account

08:45.565 --> 08:47.805
of a child soldier that mimics an oral testimony,

08:48.025 --> 08:50.845
the book almost seems to mock the notion,

08:50.915 --> 08:52.965
that we can actually get to know

08:53.105 --> 08:54.845
and feel something akin to,

08:55.425 --> 08:57.765
Uh, a certain kind of real empathy

08:57.765 --> 08:59.365
by reading a first person narration.

08:59.665 --> 09:02.765
And, and so without the context of knowing

09:02.865 --> 09:04.165
how the child soldier was being,

09:04.365 --> 09:08.085
I think politically manipulated, you didn't get, I think,

09:08.085 --> 09:09.925
the full meaning of what this author was trying to do.

09:10.025 --> 09:13.085
So every chapter has variations on what I just described on

09:13.085 --> 09:15.005
how this framework offers a new reading,

09:15.025 --> 09:17.405
but I, I think the Child Soldier chapter is,

09:17.405 --> 09:20.365
perhaps the most succinct, example of that in the book.

09:20.365 --> 09:23.085
This is in part, you know, I draw in work from Susan Sontag,

09:23.195 --> 09:27.005
Dominic La Capra, Dory Loeb and Shoshana Felman,

09:27.005 --> 09:28.805
and Michael Rothberg, among others who've written on

09:28.805 --> 09:29.885
multi-directional memory.

09:30.345 --> 09:34.725
Um, and, I think a, a large part of,

09:34.725 --> 09:36.645
what this book is looking at is dealing with

09:36.645 --> 09:38.965
that double bind that I mentioned in the beginning, which is

09:38.965 --> 09:40.725
how do you both acknowledge

09:40.725 --> 09:43.285
that Africa is too often stereotyped as a place

09:43.285 --> 09:44.445
of violence and lawlessness?

09:44.825 --> 09:46.805
How do you balance that with a moral obligation

09:46.805 --> 09:50.045
to make people aware of very real, atrocities

09:50.045 --> 09:51.325
that are taking place there?

09:51.945 --> 09:54.725
Um, and so I've given the example of the Child Soldier

09:54.825 --> 09:57.605
to look at, to look at the second chapter,

09:57.605 --> 10:01.245
which talks about the film Timbuktu from the, from the,

10:01.865 --> 10:05.525
Ian Filmmaker Abdurahman Sisko, this book in in particular,

10:05.525 --> 10:07.325
which is about, the violence

10:07.585 --> 10:10.045
of Islamist terrorists in West Africa.

10:10.745 --> 10:14.245
Um, this filmmaker, who was inspired

10:14.245 --> 10:16.445
by real world events in Timbuktu, including a family

10:16.505 --> 10:18.125
or including a couple, an adulterous

10:18.125 --> 10:19.245
couple that was stoned to death.

10:19.665 --> 10:23.925
He makes a very deliberate choice to not show, acts

10:23.925 --> 10:25.965
of graphic violence against human beings.

10:25.985 --> 10:28.405
And he's much more focused on the trauma

10:28.425 --> 10:32.365
of anticipation on the way in which living under occupation,

10:32.665 --> 10:35.285
affects every, moment of people's lives.

10:35.745 --> 10:38.565
So it's very much a symbolic violence rather than

10:38.845 --> 10:39.965
a graphic violence.

10:40.545 --> 10:42.045
Um, and my argument,

10:42.105 --> 10:44.285
and also to get back to the Post called War idea, is

10:44.285 --> 10:47.005
that he draws our attention in with the promise, perhaps,

10:47.025 --> 10:49.965
of spectacular violence of the terrorist figure.

10:50.065 --> 10:51.765
You have terrorists at the opening of the film,

10:52.045 --> 10:53.445
shooting at, statues.

10:53.505 --> 10:56.125
And, but he subverts this expectation

10:56.125 --> 10:58.325
and instead turns our attention towards the much more

10:58.325 --> 11:00.285
difficult to grasp notion of what it might be like

11:00.285 --> 11:02.605
to live under military occupation.

11:02.665 --> 11:06.205
So the book is, is very interested in the specific

11:06.215 --> 11:09.205
strategies, filmmaking strategies, editorial strategies

11:09.555 --> 11:10.725
that are being used

11:11.265 --> 11:13.685
to present this violence in an ethical way.

11:13.945 --> 11:16.405
Um, and, and the last very brief example I'll give is

11:16.435 --> 11:20.725
Rwandan Tutsi survivor, testimony,

11:20.725 --> 11:24.605
where often in the media they, we have survivors from Wanda

11:24.605 --> 11:26.805
who have forgiven their neighbors or who are resilient

11:26.805 --> 11:28.165
and are shown as examples

11:28.165 --> 11:29.485
models that we're supposed to follow.

11:30.145 --> 11:32.965
And I specifically look at texts that question,

11:33.115 --> 11:34.605
this presentation of survivors

11:34.605 --> 11:36.245
and say, well, what if we looked not at

11:36.245 --> 11:37.765
what the survivor can teach us,

11:38.185 --> 11:40.525
but rather what our obligations are towards survivors?

11:40.625 --> 11:43.845
How might we, even as an act of reading, think

11:43.845 --> 11:45.285
of reading as an act of accompaniment

11:45.285 --> 11:48.245
and an act of hospitality, rather than the ethnic,

11:48.345 --> 11:49.845
the ethically questionable stance

11:49.865 --> 11:51.525
of reading a survivor testimony

11:51.545 --> 11:53.485
for our own betterment or inspiration?

11:53.595 --> 11:55.925
What I hope they take from the book is, is related to what,

11:55.945 --> 11:58.965
I was just saying in terms of thinking of new ways

11:59.065 --> 12:02.245
of reading, and engaging with stories from Africa.

12:02.785 --> 12:07.325
Um, I think in particular, bombarded all the time,

12:07.325 --> 12:09.125
especially with recent events in the Middle East,

12:09.205 --> 12:13.045
I think like never before, very harrowing graphic images

12:13.225 --> 12:15.485
of other people's suffering that are often devoid

12:15.485 --> 12:17.765
of any kind of, political context.

12:18.625 --> 12:21.925
And so I hope overall they would, I would be able

12:21.925 --> 12:24.405
to impress upon them the importance of a great deal

12:24.405 --> 12:27.165
of critical distance when being confronted with, graphic

12:27.265 --> 12:28.765
and violent images from Africa

12:28.785 --> 12:31.045
or other places in the world, a curiosity

12:31.185 --> 12:35.005
to learn more about the historical context as well,

12:35.005 --> 12:37.205
with, of course, some critical distance in terms of

12:37.205 --> 12:38.685
what sources they consult for that.

12:39.405 --> 12:41.065
But at the same time,

12:41.265 --> 12:43.665
I think there's a danger in a critical distance

12:43.665 --> 12:46.305
that shuts out any kind of emotional reaction as somehow

12:46.535 --> 12:47.945
that, we're being manipulated,

12:48.125 --> 12:50.465
or that's preventing us from, from thinking clearly.

12:51.085 --> 12:53.985
And that it's not, it's not as if there's not a place for us

12:54.005 --> 12:57.665
to be moved, by seeing distant images of suffering,

12:58.085 --> 13:01.705
but it's really a question of who, how are we being moved?

13:01.725 --> 13:03.345
For what reasons are we having a reaction?

13:03.925 --> 13:06.945
Um, and I give the example, just to give a concrete example

13:07.165 --> 13:08.385
of something I'd hope,

13:08.385 --> 13:11.105
the reader would take away is the difference between empathy

13:11.245 --> 13:12.665
and empathic unsettlement,

13:12.915 --> 13:14.865
which is a term from Dominic La Capra.

13:15.125 --> 13:17.185
And he defines empathic unsettlement

13:17.445 --> 13:19.265
as when you're reading about the history

13:19.265 --> 13:21.145
and event, you have an emotional reaction,

13:21.145 --> 13:22.305
you feel somewhat unsettled,

13:22.605 --> 13:25.025
but it's not that fast reaction of thinking,

13:25.025 --> 13:26.105
it's as if I was there.

13:26.105 --> 13:27.785
Oh, it's as if I'm in that person's shoes.

13:27.995 --> 13:31.185
Which in some ways is a very sort of narcissistic and,

13:31.325 --> 13:33.545
and not very helpful reaction to have.

13:33.965 --> 13:35.745
So if I can help readers in the context

13:35.765 --> 13:39.105
of stories from Africa or elsewhere, think critically,

13:39.105 --> 13:40.625
both about historical context,

13:40.725 --> 13:43.385
but also the emotional context with which they engage

13:43.385 --> 13:46.145
with these kind of stories, I would be,

13:46.265 --> 13:48.825
I would be quite pleased if readers, came away with

13:48.825 --> 13:49.265
that notion.

00:00 - And a lot of ways this book, started when I studied abroad in Senegal. When I was an undergraduate in 2003 and 2004, I was studying Francophone literature at a Senegalese University. I was, living in a dorm with a Senegalese roommate.

00:13 - I was often the only, non Senegalese person in my classes. and I was really struck by my experience of living in Africa day to day, which was really a lot about hospitality and friendship and community. and then the vision of Africa I had had before I came and the way Africa Africa's often portrayed in the media. and so I returned to the United States wanting to, as a undergraduate, work some more on Africa.

00:40 - And it was then that I discovered, fictional literature about the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, which was vastly different event and cultural context from what I had experienced. and so there's a fundamental question that I think runs through the entire book. That was when I started, that was that I started formulating at that time, which was essentially how to balance the day-to-day lived experience of, of Africa

01:06 - for the thousands, hundreds of thousands of cult cultural contexts that exist, which are often very different from the stereotype portrayals. How to balance that with also making visible very real traumatic, tragic events like the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, and doing so in a way that was thoughtful and that was ethical and was not reproducing these kind of stereotypes. and so I was still very much motivated by this question

01:30 - of how to ethically represent, violence from Africa when I started on my PhD dissertation. but I wanted to broaden, the scope from the genocide in Rwanda to look at some other cultural context. And so that's where I started looking, not just at literature and first person testimony from, survivors of the 19 94 2 T genocide, but at, novels, first person, literature,

01:53 - about child soldiers or narrated by child soldiers, and then also at representations of the Islamist, terrorist, which, sadly in Africa, there has been, over the last decades violence done in the name of Islam similar to what we associate war say with Afghanistan or, Iraq or places in the, in the Middle East. and, as I was doing that, I began to see how a lot of these figures, like the child soldier, and the Islamist terrorist

02:20 - and the TSI Rwandan survivor, that the way they were talked about in media often had a very, clear, political, purpose and that this political purpose could be, usefully situated with the way international relations had changed, following the Cold War. so I, I think I'll get into that a little bit, later in the interview. But I would say the genesis of this,

02:43 - this book really emerged with my own firsthand experience in Africa, and then reconciling that with the very different, experience and event of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, which I learned about upon my return from Senegal. There were, multiple strands, or Multiple threads of research that went into this. on the one hand, the book itself, is not an exhaustive, sort of encyclopedic chronicle of all the authors or filmmakers

03:09 - who have written about violent events in Africa. it's close readings of, and viewings of a number of texts. And so on the one hand, there are simply a lot of very, close reading of, the, the work. Ella is not obliged Johnny Mad Dog, the film, and then the film Timbuktu, tootsy survivor memoirs, including those by Esri Muo and, Venus Ka Maha and Elise Mus Mandera, which I really engaged with, and read, very, very closely, in terms of

03:41 - figuring out how I was gonna situate my arguments within the larger discussions that were happening at the time. what I found was that there was a lot of interest in representations of violence from Africa, and there was a lot of interest with how, from scholars with the ways in which political violence like the Tutsi genocide, child soldiers, and, Islamist terrorists and their victims were being represented. There's also much more, broader, occurring

04:07 - of thought emerging from, in large part from Holocaust studies called trauma studies that was looking not just at, in the African context, but in a broader context about the ethics, responding to traumatic stories about the politi, politicizing of memory and things like that. And while, there had been some work on, say, post-colonial trauma studies, in the specific context of Africa and what it meant to mediate violence from Africa, specifically, through the lens of these theories

04:33 - of ethical ways to represent trauma, that there had not been as much, connecting those two strands. And so I became very motivated, motivated, motivated to find new ways to talk about and think about representing trauma from Africa in part, and formed by theories of the witness, theories of the relationship between the witness and the person and the person listening, and things like that. And then, the final piece, in addition to engaging with the primary texts

04:58 - and engaging with these theoretical texts on, on trauma theory and post-colonial studies, was to look at, just contemporary, or I should say, contemporary in the last 20, 30 years, political accounts, how were child soldiers represented in newspapers? How were they talked about by politicians? How were they talked about, you know, by, by people in the un And then trying to, situate the specific works I was talking about,

05:22 - about child soldiers, about terrorists, about Tutsi survivors. not just within the context of other literary works, other films about these figures, but in the broader context of how these figures were discussed, in mainstream media and political discourse. And to see ways in which the authors or filmmakers themselves might actually be responding to the very politicized in some ways semantically,

05:45 - overdetermined, nature of the figures they were writing about. So, I, I should say, this post called where framework is, is certainly not one that I've invented. It's one that I came Across a lot in reading, political, political science, articles in political science articles in anthropology and in sociology, talking about changes in political organization in Africa, changes in sociopolitical

06:09 - organization in Africa. And I was struck by, in the domain of literary film and cultural studies in the Frankfort African context, that this specific framework wasn't really being used. People were still using post-colonial, or critiquing post-colonial, but not offering replacements. and it, and I began to realize that although of course, like any framework, it's limiting and it leaves things out and it needs to be interrogated, that it actually could be very useful to understand

06:36 - why figures like child soldiers, why figures like Tootsy genocide survivors, why figures like terrorists and figures like celebrity humanitarians were all of a sudden popping up pretty much everywhere that you looked, in the 1990s. And I think the child soldiers probably the best, maybe the clearest example, that I can give, which is that, there certainly were child soldiers combatants under the age of 18 that were participating in armed

07:02 - conflicts in Africa during the Cold War. And this has been documented by historian, by anthropologists like David Rosen. but the West seemed relatively indifferent to that because they were fighting against communism, which was the big priority of the international community with the fall of the Soviet Union, and with, the quote unquote international community looking for new, kind of organizing principles to justify their work together.

07:26 - all of a sudden defending, children's rights became this big priority. And so you can actually trace a through line between, un statements and reports and meetings about the rights of children and fighting, child, and, and fighting, child, combatants, child soldiers to then articles in the media presenting this as all of a sudden this brand new phenomenon in Africa. And then novels, both francophone Anglo

07:52 - and Anglophone with child soldier protagonists. But every time I read people speaking about these books in the context of Francophone African literature, nowhere was anyone mentioning about this new focus on child soldiers, how there was some, contradiction or hypocrisy in, you know, ignoring the phenomenon when it suited the west, and then all of a sudden rallying around the prevention of, of child soldiering when it seemed politically expedient. And that, to me, felt like a very important, thing

08:19 - to acknowledge, because if an author is not somehow acknowledging that when writing a story of a child soldier, they themselves, one could argue are complicit in, in making the child soldier seem like an object of empathy, which would then justify western intervention, et cetera. and I found that this lens opened up a whole new reading of this book called Ali is Not Obliged by Amadou Carma, where in fact, rather than being a first person account of a child soldier that mimics an oral testimony, the book almost seems to mock the notion,

08:50 - that we can actually get to know and feel something akin to, a certain kind of real empathy by reading a first person narration. And, and so without the context of knowing how the child soldier was being, I think politically manipulated, you didn't get, I think, the full meaning of what this author was trying to do. So every chapter has variations on what I just described on how this framework offers a new reading,

09:15 - but I, I think the Child Soldier chapter is, perhaps the most succinct, example of that in the book. This is in part, you know, I draw in work from Susan Sontag, Dominic La Capra, Dory Loeb and Shoshana Felman, and Michael Rothberg, among others who've written on multi-directional memory. and, I think a, a large part of, what this book is looking at is dealing with that double bind that I mentioned in the beginning, which is how do you both acknowledge

09:40 - that Africa is too often stereotyped as a place of violence and lawlessness? How do you balance that with a moral obligation to make people aware of very real, atrocities that are taking place there? and so I've given the example of the Child Soldier to look at, to look at the second chapter, which talks about the film Timbuktu from the, from the, Ian Filmmaker Abdurahman Sisko, this book in in particular, which is about, the violence

10:07 - of Islamist terrorists in West Africa. this filmmaker, who was inspired by real world events in Timbuktu, including a family or including a couple, an adulterous couple that was stoned to death. He makes a very deliberate choice to not show, acts of graphic violence against human beings. And he's much more focused on the trauma of anticipation on the way in which living under occupation, affects every, moment of people's lives.

10:35 - So it's very much a symbolic violence rather than a graphic violence. and my argument, and also to get back to the Post called War idea, is that he draws our attention in with the promise, perhaps, of spectacular violence of the terrorist figure. You have terrorists at the opening of the film, shooting at, statues. And, but he subverts this expectation and instead turns our attention towards the much more

10:58 - difficult to grasp notion of what it might be like to live under military occupation. So the book is, is very interested in the specific strategies, filmmaking strategies, editorial strategies that are being used to present this violence in an ethical way. and, and the last very brief example I'll give is Rwandan Tutsi survivor, testimony, where often in the media they, we have survivors from Wanda who have forgiven their neighbors or who are resilient

11:26 - and are shown as examples models that we're supposed to follow. And I specifically look at texts that question, this presentation of survivors and say, well, what if we looked not at what the survivor can teach us, but rather what our obligations are towards survivors? How might we, even as an act of reading, think of reading as an act of accompaniment and an act of hospitality, rather than the ethnic,

11:48 - the ethically questionable stance of reading a survivor testimony for our own betterment or inspiration? What I hope they take from the book is, is related to what, I was just saying in terms of thinking of new ways of reading, and engaging with stories from Africa. I think in particular, bombarded all the time, especially with recent events in the Middle East, I think like never before, very harrowing graphic images of other people's suffering that are often devoid

12:15 - of any kind of, political context. And so I hope overall they would, I would be able to impress upon them the importance of a great deal of critical distance when being confronted with, graphic and violent images from Africa or other places in the world, a curiosity to learn more about the historical context as well, with, of course, some critical distance in terms of what sources they consult for that. But at the same time,

12:41 - I think there's a danger in a critical distance that shuts out any kind of emotional reaction as somehow that, we're being manipulated, or that's preventing us from, from thinking clearly. And that it's not, it's not as if there's not a place for us to be moved, by seeing distant images of suffering, but it's really a question of who, how are we being moved? For what reasons are we having a reaction? and I give the example, just to give a concrete example of something I'd hope,

13:08 - the reader would take away is the difference between empathy and empathic unsettlement, which is a term from Dominic La Capra. And he defines empathic unsettlement as when you're reading about the history and event, you have an emotional reaction, you feel somewhat unsettled, but it's not that fast reaction of thinking, it's as if I was there. it's as if I'm in that person's shoes.

13:27 - Which in some ways is a very sort of narcissistic and, and not very helpful reaction to have. So if I can help readers in the context of stories from Africa or elsewhere, think critically, both about historical context, but also the emotional context with which they engage with these kind of stories, I would be, I would be quite pleased if readers, came away with that notion.

Faculti AI can make mistakes